


follow me and i'll follow you

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2010 Winter Olympics, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17490062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: The beginning of The HugTM





	follow me and i'll follow you

**Author's Note:**

> I _feel_ like I read somewhere that they started The Hug in Vancouver but I can’t find where, so just go with it if I’m wrong? If you want to find me on tumblr I’m @sinkingsidewalks there too.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

**Compulsory Dance**

Tessa stood beside him, rocking back and forth on her skate guards, and doing that weird syncopated breathing thing she did when she got really nervous. It was two even, measured, counted breaths – in, out, in, out – then three near hyperventilating gasps, then she got it back together for two more controlled ones.

The rhythm always changed and varied, until she either got it under control or went to throw up.

He was really hoping that she wouldn’t throw up. It would only make him feel like he was going to throw up and he was already uncharacteristically nauseous. He’d hardly been able to pick at his breakfast that morning. 

Besides, she hated it when other people noticed her stress-puking habit and half their competition was milling about backstage. It would draw attention if she puked into the garbage can a few feet away he’d seen her eyeing. 

But he didn’t know what to do to curb her anxiety. He’d already said everything he was supposed to say to her. They’d walked through the program mentally – twice – and gone over the keyword for each moment, each movement. And if they went over it too many times it started to get counter-productive; they started to overthink, to muddle the steps that should be blade-sharp in their minds eye. So he couldn’t bring it back up, but he also couldn’t think of anything to say.

She bounced on the balls of her feet, testing the flexion of her knees. He wanted to ask if her legs were all right – even though they probably weren’t – but he’d promised that once they were in the arena he wouldn’t bring it up unless she did. 

It was a classic Tessa willpower strategy, deny, deny, deny until the thing she didn’t like, the person that was annoying her, the feeling she didn’t want to feel, actually ceased to exist. But it wasn’t the time for him to begrudge her for it. Really, he should probably thank her; he sure as hell wasn’t what had gotten them through the last two seasons. 

She was up to four gasps for every even breath, her gaze flicking between a mark on the concrete wall and the door to the women’s bathroom across the room. He could see her mentally cataloguing how quickly she could make it through the door, in her skate guards, without looking like she was running for it. 

“Tess.” He put his hand on her shoulder and she stopped shifting. He exhaled all the way out, to the bottom of his lungs, until he could feel the pressure in his chest, and her gasps stopped. 

He figured that was improvement so he dropped his arm around the back of her shoulder and pulled her closer. She folded into his arms, hugging him tight around his ribs so that their bodies were pressed together from shoulders to hips. Making an effort to exaggerate the movement of his chest, he drew in another slow, deep breath which she intuitively followed. 

“Just breathe.” He whispered into her ear. “It’s just like any other skate.”

She almost laughed. “It’s just the Olympics.”

He felt her fingers curl into fists around his shirt at his waist and ran his hand up to her bare shoulders, rubbing circles into her tense muscles. He dropped his nose down to the slope of her neck and could feel the desperate pulse of her heart in her throat. “But we’re ready.”

Her breath washed, warm and easy, over his shoulder and her fingers loosened their death grip. A bit of tension sagged free from her body. 

“It’s you and me, Tess.” He squeezed the back of her neck. “We’ve got this.”

They cycled through one more breath, measured out by the metronome in his head, then pulled away to meet each other’s eyes. She didn’t say anything but he could read the relief in her eyes and nodded his agreement. He felt more settled too.

A throat cleared behind him and he turned around to find a volunteer watching curiously, a few feet away, with a clipboard in her hand. 

“Yeah?” he asked and the woman motioned towards the ice. 

“You need to come with me now.”

“Right.” He looked back at Tessa, who no longer had a green tinge creeping up beneath her makeup. He held out his hand to her, just like any other day, and she slipped her hand into his. 

She squeezed his fingers. “Let’s go.”

 

**Original Dance**

His hands were shaking so badly she could see it. He was trying to hide it by alternating between tucking them under his armpits and setting them on his hips, elbows jutting out. But she could still see he was freaking out. She could feel the anxiety rolling off him in waves, the same way it must have been leeching from her the day before. 

Tessa glanced over at the screen in the corner showing what was happening on the ice. The next team was just settling into their opening position, she didn’t know who it was, she wasn’t paying attention to faces, but she figured they had maybe five minutes until they’d be in their own opening. 

And he was only ramping himself up, spiralling his anxiety higher and higher.

“Scott,” she whispered, her voice weaker in her throat than she expected. He snapped his attention to her.

“What do you need?” He was in front of her in an instant and she reached out, tugging him towards her by his vest until his arms fell around her shoulders and she could hug around his middle.

“This helps,” she said into his shoulder. He nodded against her temple and sunk a bit of his weight into her. 

She squeezed his ribs, letting him know that she was there, that she could hold him up too, and led their slow, measured breathing like he did the day before. Her own stress leaked away with his and in its place was a kind of calm. Like the thoughts buzzing around her brain had been snuffed out with a fluffy down comforter. 

She breathed him in, the familiarity of Scott, the feeling of his hands on her shoulders, his lungs expanding and contracting rhythmic with hers. He was almost more familiar to her than her own reflection, she knew the lines on his palms better than the ones on hers and that certainty stripped away her fears. Like crawling into Jordan’s bed when they were kids and it was storming out. 

Except Scott was better, because he was there for every day. Every feeling, every fear was matched in him, and he found the same relief in her that she did in him. It allowed her to settle, to focus, to be brave in a way she didn’t think she could be on her own. It allowed her to believe they could win.

Marina approached behind him and they pulled away from each other after one last squeeze. Scott’s hands weren’t shaking anymore. 

 

**Free Dance**

They didn’t have to talk about it before the Free. Once they finished walking through their keywords, Scott held out his arms and she stepped into the hug. 

“This is good, right?” he whispered as her hands fell gently on his waist. He stroked the skin of her back where her dress left it bare. 

“Yeah,” she mumbled back. “We should do this all the time.”

He nodded, followed her inhale, then spoke once they were in sync. “Just one more.”

“One more.” Tessa mimicked. “We’ve got this.”

“Absolutely.” His eyes closed and he breathed in the smell of her hairspray and vanilla body wash. With his nose tucked into her throat the bustle of the whole arena fell away until he could feel only her, only home. His breath shuddered free and he slipped into the now familiar calm of the moment. 

When they separated, her hands lingering on the loose sleeves of his forearms, he kissed her cheek once, and said for only her to hear: “Let’s go win a gold medal.”

Her answering grin lit up her whole face. “Let’s.”

**Author's Note:**

> There’s been a lot of negativity in the tag lately which led Chrissy (who was challenged by Peacefulboo) to challenge the Writers’ Guild to flash-write more positive fics, a challenge which I set to all of you reading this if you want to partake. #takebackthetag


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